Education in India: Past, Present and the Future. Ideas, Policies and Initiatives

September 25, 2011

Insightful interview with Mike Feerick of Alison.com on the future of online education. Alison.com provides "high-quality, interactive, certified and standards-based learning free to the individual learner", something similar to the Khan Academy. Feerick also talks about the sustainability of Salman Khan's Khan Academy.

The aim of this programme is to facilitate principals of engineering colleges to enhance their leadership skills and develop them as institution builders who can make a significant difference to all the stakeholders in engineering education, Wipro said in a statement.

It is designed as three progressive levels of workshops, and includes instructor-led training as well as e-learning. During this process of leadership development, principals would enhance their capabilities in strategic thinking, vision building, skills and competency development, the company said.

Mission10X is a not for profit trust created by Wipro Limited in 2007 with a vision of "Pursuit of Excellence in Engineering Education through Innovation." The have conducted over 500 workshops for faculty members across various engineering colleges. One of their goals is to bridge the gap between the number of employable graduates and the number required by industry.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar launched the ‘Samjho Sikho’ campaign covering nearly 71,000 elementary schools across Bihar. ‘After achieving success in enrollment in schools, now our target is to improve quality of education in the schools,’ Nitish Kumar said after launching the scheme, also mentioning that the state government has outlined 20 parameters that will be followed by all schools.

The CM has also written a letter addressing teachers circulated to all elementary schools, to be read out to students wherein he suggests ways to improve quality of education. He said that in the last five and a half years, the state government has worked hard to ensure that children are enrolled in schools. “The government’s measures have succeeded to a large extent as only 2.5 percent children are now out of school. When I came to power in November 2005, 12 percent children were out of schools,” Nitish Kumar said.

No enforcing of uniform school curriculum, but core curriculum is being used voluntarily, says Kapil Sibal (Indian Express)

“There is no proposal to enforce a uniform system and curriculum at secondary and higher secondary levels,” HRD Minister Kapil Sibal said during Question Hour in the Rajya Sabha.

“CABE has endorsed the need for a core curriculum in science and mathematics at secondary and higher secondary levels across all Education Boards in the country, so as to provide a level playing field to all studentsto join professional courses,” Sibal said.

Replying to supplementaries, the minister said 21 Boards unanimously decided to adopt core curriculum in science and mathematics at secondary level.

“Accordingly, NCERT has developed core syllabi in Biology, Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics at higher secondary stage in collaboration with Council of Boards of secondary education and CBSE,” he said, adding core syllabus for commerce stream too is likely to be completed by next month.

June 21, 2011

Is Salman Khan the Most Overhyped Edu-Entrepreneur of the Moment? Frederick Hess thinks so.

[Khan academy] is necessary and inevitable. Why? Because it merely does for schooling what books did five centuries ago, which is take the rote exercise of explaining stuff to students and permit experts to do it in a more careful and painstaking fashion, while freeing them from doing it again and again. Rather than explain the same points to twenty kids at a time, over and over, it becomes possible to devote that time to exquisitely preparing a lecture that can be experienced by 20,000 or 20 million students at a time. ........ Khan Academy makes it possible for teachers to start focusing more on, you know, teaching and mentoring and engaging with students, rather than on having to tell them stuff.

What Sal Khan has done is something that many have been calling for and that folks could've, should've been doing a few years ago (instead of filming and posting cute kitten videos). It's something that could've, should've come from folks in ed schools or school districts--and Kahn's energy and talent show just how pallid and negligent the edu-space has been when it comes to leveraging new tools and technologies. Kahn has a great story, is clearly a terrific lecturer, and the notion that students should listen to lectures at home and do their actual work in school is a sensible one, but it's not real clear to me why Kahn is popping up on Colbert or being feted as a star at high-profile edu-conferences.

I don't mean for any of this to be read as a critique of Khan Academy. I admire what Sal Khan has done and don't know it well enough at this point to have any particular concerns about his venture. But we do have this ugly habit in education of taking sensible ideas, overselling them, turning them into fads, inviting backlash, and then slouching away when they inevitably fail to deliver on ludicrous, inflated expectations. And my hope is that we're not revving up for one more go at that familiar treadmill.

Jal Mehta of Harvard on the four different futures of school reform in America[Edweek]

If we keep doing what we're doing, we're not going to get there. Broadly speaking, four pathways have emerged that would depart significantly from our present path, and offer some reason to think that they might yield large-scale improvement:

June 13, 2011

“There is an urgent need to frame a new national policy on education as the existing policy is too old to meet new challenges emerging out of globalisation now. The last policy was framed in the year 1986. And some minor modifications were undertaken in 1992. Since then, our education scenario and nature of employment opportunities have changed substantially,” a ministry official told Deccan Herald.

The new policy will seek to bring substantial changes in education system by introducing academic reforms so as to bring improvement in quality of education. The vocational education will be another focus area, besides increasing access and quality in education to meet the international standards, to take advantage of the demographic dividend of the country and to fulfill the aspirations and rights of youth to gainful employment and contribute to national productivity.

.......

A national-level conference of vice-chancellors, organised by the University Grant Commission in March, too, had recommended a new education policy at the earliest. It had suggested that it was important to look into the kind of a policy framework appropriate for analysis of access, equity and quality in higher education in India. The participants underlined that development of tertiary ed­ucation is largely dependent on the output of secondary education as the secondary sch­ool sub-sector contributes substantially to access and equity co­ncerns observed at the entry le­vel of the undergraduate courses.

“Can you make a $600 iPad (he meant tablet) for, say, $35? That is the question. We are looking at bringing the total cost of ownership down,” Anurag Srivastava, the chief technology officer and senior vice-president for Wipro’s global IT business, said in an interview. ....

Cost will be a critical factor as affordability in emerging markets is one of the underlying themes of the partnership with imec. The projects have a social aspect to them, Srivastava said. The tablet, for instance, is aimed at the rural and mass education segment, which fits in with the main thrust of Wipro chairman Azim Premji’s philanthropy—learning. The device is being developed with the main aim of creating a low-cost product with applications in education as well as the “government sector”, he said. “We’re looking at two-three proofs-of-concept in a year’s time. It’s not just a deployable consumer product, right? It’s about establishing that you can solve the process problem at ‘x’ dollars, as a total cost,” he said.

Companies have for long run schools near their factories for the children of their staff. But that’s corporate social responsibility, not charity, and hence not scalable. Things have taken a turn for the better now. Indian businessmen, made rich beyond belief by the stock market boom of the last seven years, are moving in to plug the gap in primary education.